Wenger calls for inquiry & explains his thinking during pre-Koln delay

Arsene Wenger said that his side ‘waited patiently’ for kick-off in their first ever Europa League game, which was delayed by an hour as the German fans caused all sorts of chaos inside and outside the stadium.

In the video above you can also hear Wenger talking about Koln’s ‘stunner’, Arsenal’s balance and preparedness for the game as well as his surprise that the game went ahead.

“We waited patiently in our dressing room,” Wenger said, “but what was difficult was for me was I had all kind of plans to think about at some stage.

“I had to think if we play tomorrow at what time do we want to play, do we play next week… but they have the Bundesliga again in midweek, and we had a League Cup game midweek as well.

“Do we move it to Tuesday and play Thursday? It was all kind of speculations you know that we had to analyse and see how we can deal with the situation.

“But in the end at some stage I thought they would not play the game, because I can’t see the police taking any risk.

“We live in a society of 100 per cent security and I thought they would never take a gamble to play this game when I saw the images around the stadium.

“But I must say our supporters as well dealt well with the situation as well and there was no aggravation. I hope everything goes well after the game.”

Wenger also admitted that he is hoping for an inquiry after the crowd chaos say a reported 20,000 Cologne fans descend upon the Emirates, saying that their fans ‘did very well’ to infiltrate all areas of the Emirates.

“Only they know the facts to analyse what happened. They should certainly make an inquiry to find out what happened, for sure,” said Wenger.

“There were certainly more people here than had tickets. We left that to the police. I don’t know how they managed to infiltrate our fans. Did they go through membership or the internet? I don’t know but they did it very well.”

When questioned after the game, the Cologne manager refused to make any sort of meaningful comment, merely saying, “No comment about the fans.”

Peter Stöger continued, “I am the coach and my job is the team and not the fans.” A spokesman for the German club added: “We will inform ourselves and officially talk about that in future days.”